Good news! However, this proposed detection system seems to be very slow and works only in close proximity of a satellite containing a nuclear weapon.
"In 2024, a U.S. government official warned that Russia could be developing a new satellite designed to carry nuclear weapons into space. The statement followed the launch of a suspicious Russian satellite into low-Earth orbit in 2022, just a few weeks before the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
A nuclear detonation in low-Earth orbit — the region about 100 miles to 1,200 miles above Earth’s surface — would release trillions of highly energetic electrons that would destroy many of the satellites in space, disrupting telecommunications networks, GPS, space-based internet, and more.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty bans the placement of nuclear weapons in space, but there’s currently no way to verify satellites don’t contain nuclear weapons. In fact, no verification methods have even been proposed in unclassified, peer-reviewed literature. ...
In the paper, Danagoulian calculates that a sensor system the size of a large encyclopedia could detect a nuclear weapon with 99 percent accuracy if it orbited within 4,000 meters of the suspect satellite for about a week. He also estimates that the detection time could be cut to a matter of hours if multiple satellite sensors were used or the sensor satellite was able to get within 1,000 meters of the suspect satellite. ..."
From the abstract:
"The Outer Space Treaty (OST) was opened to signatures in 1967 and, since then, 117 countries, including China, the USA and Russia, have become part of it. Among other stipulations, the treaty bans the placement of nuclear weapons in outer space.
Recently, the US government has raised worries that Russia is testing nuclear-armed anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) components, with the possibility that it will place a nuclear weapon in space.
Such a device, if detonated, would destroy most of the satellites in the low Earth orbit. This danger is compounded by the lack of a verification mechanism for the OST.
No methodologies of verification have been proposed in the open peer-reviewed literature.
Here a concept and feasibility study is presented for verifying a satellite’s compliance to the OST by observing the neutrons induced by spallation from the approximately GeV protons in the inner Van Allen radiation belts.
The calculations show that a 9U-CubeSat-sized detection platform can identify a thermonuclear weapon from a distance of 4 km in approximately one week of observation. This conceptual study will stimulate and inform future research and development of verification platforms for the OST."
MIT researcher proposes a way to detect nuclear weapons in space | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology "The 1967 Outer Space Treaty bans nuclear weapons in space, but there’s currently no way to verify that satellites aren’t carrying them."
